Lucas Chen

Parts list

1. 1Current

   Zynga

   Software Engineer

   May 2025 – Present · Toronto, ON

   AdTech team: AI tooling and ad projects.

   • Designed and led internal tooling for ad-serving configurations: an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server and tools that let AI assistants work with ad-serving configuration.
   • Worked on an AI LiveOps agent that cut a workflow from 2–3 hours to about 20 minutes.
   • Designed and led a project that helps games identify high-value ads.
2. 2Internship

   Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence

   Full Stack Engineering Intern

   May 2023 – Jun 2024

   • Developed 15+ UI and 10+ API production features for the Nexus Platform, using React and Express with TypeScript.
   • Reduced load times for user list pages by 97% by optimizing API calls and refining Express APIs.
   • Cut test automation start-up time by up to 98% by parallelizing the Playwright test suite setup.
   • Reduced API response time by up to 82% with an Azure Cosmos DB proxy that moved Express APIs to C# .NET database pagination.

   Material TypeScript · React · Express · C# · .NET · Azure Cosmos DB · Playwright

3. 3Teaching

   McMaster University

   Teaching Assistant

   Sep 2022 – Apr 2023 · Hamilton, ON

   • 1P13 Integrated Engineering Project (Sep–Dec 2022).
   • 2GA3 Computer Architecture (Jan–Apr 2023).
4. 4Internship

   Exchange Solutions

   Software Engineering Intern

   May 2022 – Aug 2022

   E-commerce and loyalty platforms: a Shopify app on AWS, plus AR, blockchain and data-visualization work.

   • Made e-commerce client onboarding over 10x faster by building AWS Lambda components.
   • Led an augmented reality proof of concept for a national loyalty program, built with 8th Wall WebAR and JavaScript.
   • Raised a loyalty platform’s user engagement by 4% by integrating it with blockchain assets, using Next.js, Ethereum and the Alchemy API.
   • Built a real-time data visualization dashboard (D3.js, Snowflake), improving early error catching and data comparisons by over 10%.

   Material AWS Lambda · JavaScript · Next.js · D3.js · Snowflake · 8th Wall WebAR · Shopify API

5. 5Research

   McMaster Artificial Intelligence Society

   AI Research Member

   Oct 2021 – 2022 · Hamilton, ON

   • Worked with a team of four developers on training a humanoid to walk and navigate obstacles in a ragdoll physics simulation.
   • Used C# and Unity to train and simulate the humanoid.

   Material C# · Unity

6. 6Internship

   InsideDesk

   Software Engineering Intern

   Jun 2021 – Sep 2021

   • Found 50+ bugs through QA testing, validated bug fixes, and was the link between clients and the development team.
   • Cut manual tasks by over 30% with custom JavaScript Slack bots that automate the customer onboarding notifications.
   • Wrote automated end-to-end UI tests with Selenium and Python, cutting manual QA testing by 40%.

   Material JavaScript · Python · Selenium · Slack

1. 1

   Ad-config MCP

   Schematic · not to scale

   Zynga · AdTech

   1. AI assistants
   2. MCP server + tools1Designed & led · L. Chen
   3. Ad-serving configuration

   Notes

   I designed and led internal tooling for ad-serving configurations at Zynga: a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server and tools that let AI assistants work with ad-serving configuration.

   AI · MCP · AdTech · Leadership

2. 2

   LiveOps agent

   Section A–A · to scale

   AA

   Before2–3 h

   After~20 min1

   0 h1 h2 h3 h

   Notes

   I worked on an AI LiveOps agent that cut a workflow from 2–3 hours to about 20 minutes.

   AI agents · LiveOps · Automation

3. 3

   High-value ads

   Schematic · not to scale

   Zynga · AdTech

   1. Games
   2. High-value ads project3Designed & led · L. Chen
   3. High-value ads

   Notes

   I designed and led a project that helps games identify high-value ads.

   AdTech · Leadership

1. 1D-301

   Detail 1 · Tool · 2026

   Agent Platform

   Aug 2026 – present

   agent-platform

   A control plane for safely delegating software work to autonomous coding agents.

   A harness-agnostic platform for handing software work to coding agents in Cursor, Claude Code or any other harness. The goal, from my spec: maximize architecture-approved, verified engineering output per dollar and per minute of human attention.

   Role Solo: spec, design and CLI (in progress)

   1. 1Wrote the v3 spec: missions, workflow templates, task and role contracts, review gates, model routing, memory and fleet security.
   2. 2Built the “agent” control-plane CLI in TypeScript: it scaffolds a target repo, validates artifacts against JSON Schemas and runs the claim → start → submit → gate loop.
   3. 3Workers never certify their own work: a task passes only with an evidence bundle, independent verification, and spec, quality and architecture review.
   4. 4Routes each task by risk to a capability tier (frontier, strong, mid, cheap), mapped to models by policy instead of hard-coded vendors.

   MaterialsTypeScript · Node.js · JSON Schema (Ajv) · Commander · YAML

   Case study /projects/agent-platform →GitHub github.com/lucasichen/agent-platform ↗

2. 2D-301

   Detail 2 · Product · 2026

   TennisBooker

   2023 – present

   tennisbooker.app

   Books tennis and pickleball courts the moment booking opens, every morning.

   My parents had to set a 7:30 a.m. alarm every week to get courts at our local club, so I automated it. Members set weekly schedules in a web app, and a bot books the courts each morning and texts the results.

   Role Solo, full-stack (2023 version with help from Douglas Chen)

   1. 1The bot logs in at 7:25, builds every reservation, then fires at exactly 7:30 a.m. ET for courts 7 days out, falls back to backup courts and texts results via Twilio.
   2. 2TypeScript monorepo (Turborepo): Express + Prisma/PostgreSQL API with Auth0 roles and machine-to-machine tokens for the bot, and a React, MUI and TanStack Query web app.
   3. 3Runs in Docker on a Raspberry Pi: CI builds multi-arch images to GHCR, deploys go staging → smoke test → promote with one-command rollback, and Vitest and Playwright suites cover the code.
   4. 4Began in 2023 as “Alfred”: a Playwright bot on a cron-scheduled GitLab pipeline, with a React and Express app, Firebase and multi-user Auth0 login, used by 2 clients. In Aug 2026 the bot moved to the booking platform’s new GraphQL API.

   MaterialsTypeScript · Playwright · React · Express · PostgreSQL · Auth0 · Docker

   WithDouglas Chen

   Case study /projects/tennisbooker →GitHub (2023 version) github.com/lucasichen/TennisUI ↗

3. 3D-301

   Detail 3 · Product · 2024

   PlatefulAI

   Nov – Dec 2024

   Mobile meal planner: pick meals, get a grocery list, track calories and protein.

   A mobile-first meal planner: choose meals and servings, turn them into a grocery list, and track calories and protein against personal targets. Our team of five built it as a front-end prototype on mock meal data, so the “AI-powered meal prep” step is a UI concept.

   Role Team of 5: app shell, Auth0 login, meal-planning flow, deploy

   1. 1Set up the React + Vite app with Auth0 login, the start and home screens and bottom-tab navigation, and deployed it on Vercel.
   2. 2Built the meal-planning flow: favourites, filtering out meals that clash with saved allergies and diets, a meal-details view, and meal and serving selection.
   3. 3Teammates built the grocery list and meal data (Mohammad Mohsin Khan), the calorie and protein tracker (Wajdan Faheem), and profile and target settings (Jasmine Sun-Hu).

   MaterialsReact · Vite · MUI · Auth0 · Chart.js · Vercel

   WithMohammad Mohsin Khan, Wajdan Faheem, Jasmine Sun-Hu, Hammad

   Case study /projects/plateful-ai →Live demo plateful-ai.vercel.app ↗

4. 4D-301

   Detail 4 · Product · 2024

   StudySpot

   Nov 2024

   Find a place to study at McMaster: search, filters, ratings, favourites and a map.

   A mobile-first prototype for finding study spots on McMaster’s campus: search and filter spots, save favourites, mark places visited, rate them, and see them on a map around you.

   Role Solo, front-end

   1. 1Leaflet map centred on the user’s location (falling back to Thode Library), with a marker and rating for each spot.
   2. 2Text search, attribute filters, and spot pages where you can favourite a spot, mark it visited and leave a rating.
   3. 3Runs entirely in the browser: accounts, favourites and visits persist in localStorage. Deployed on Vercel.

   MaterialsReact · Vite · Leaflet · React Router · Vercel

   Live demo studyspot4hc3.vercel.app ↗

5. 5D-301

   Detail 5 · Hackathon · 2024

   UnPassword

   Nov 2024

   unpassword

   A password manager built in one day for the MEC 2024 programming challenge.

   A password manager with Auth0 sign-in, an Express API, and passwords encrypted before they are stored in Firebase. I built it in one day with Willie Pai and Mohammad Mohsin Khan for the MEC 2024 programming challenge.

   Role Team: Auth0 login, JWT-secured API, dashboard-to-API wiring

   1. 1Added Auth0 login and logout, plus a client service layer that attaches the user’s access token to every API call.
   2. 2Added JWT verification to the Express API and set up its Vercel deployment.
   3. 3Connected the dashboard to the API for listing, adding and deleting passwords, with password-strength rules on new entries.
   4. 4Merged 13 of the team’s pull requests during the event.

   MaterialsReact · TypeScript · Vite · Ant Design · Express · Auth0 · Firebase

   WithWillie Pai, Mohammad Mohsin Khan

   GitHub github.com/PaisWillie/UnPassword ↗

6. 6D-301

   Detail 6 · Experiment · 2023

   API Resume

   Oct 2023

   zsh — api-resume

   My resume as a REST API: Postman-only, rate-limited, with a joke for anyone who POSTs.

   An Express + MongoDB API that serves my resume as JSON, one section at a time or all at once. Inspired by Eric Lake’s API resume.

   Role Solo

   1. 1Endpoints for experience, projects, education and contact, a combined /api/resume, and a menu at /api.
   2. 2Only answers Postman (other clients get a 403), rate-limits each IP per day (429), and meets any non-GET request with a joke 500.
   3. 3Express and Mongoose on MongoDB, deployed to Vercel with Vercel Analytics.

   MaterialsNode.js · Express · MongoDB · Mongoose · Vercel

   Case study /projects/api-resume →GitHub github.com/lucasichen/api-resume ↗

7. 7D-301

   Detail 7 · Product · 2023

   CarpoolX

   Mar – Apr 2023

   Android app that matches riders headed the same way so they can share a taxi.

   CarpoolX matches riders heading to the same destination so they can share a taxi and split the fare, with an upfront fare estimate and safety checks for riding with strangers. Four of us built it as a React Native Android app on a Flask and Firebase backend.

   Role Team of 4: repo lead, most of the Flask backend and auth, core screens

   1. 1Led the repo: scaffold, navigation and a feature-branch workflow. Merged all 38 pull requests that landed and wrote 119 of 156 commits.
   2. 2Wrote most of the MVC Flask backend: multi-user Firebase Auth sign-in, tokens kept in the Android Keystore, token-checked endpoints, and the controller and model layers.
   3. 3Built login and registration, the profile, taxi verification by door code, taxi details and passenger reports.
   4. 4Teammates built ride requests and matching with Google Maps routes and fare estimates (Henushan Bala), end-of-ride ratings (Rafeed Iqbal) and private group rides (Allison Cook).

   MaterialsReact Native · Python · Flask · Firebase · Google Maps Platform

   WithHenushan Bala, Rafeed Iqbal, Allison Cook

   Case study /projects/carpoolx →GitHub github.com/lucasichen/CarpoolX ↗

8. 8D-301

   Detail 8 · Experiment · 2022

   Ride Home

   Jun 2022

   ride home

   Mix subway sounds, chatter and lo-fi music into your own TTC ride-home ambience.

   A small ambient-sound web app inspired by ridethesubway: sliders blend subway ambience, background chatter and lo-fi music over a train illustration by the artist mienar.

   Role Co-created with Quinn Ha; built the app and audio controls

   1. 1Independent volume sliders for subway ambience, chatter and music.
   2. 2Light and dark themes that follow the system setting and remember the visitor’s choice.
   3. 3Responsive layout for phones, styled with Sass. Deployed on Netlify.
   4. 4Reached 610 new users in 12 months.

   MaterialsReact · Sass · MUI · AWS S3 · Netlify

   WithQuinn Ha

   Live ridehome.netlify.app ↗GitHub github.com/lucasichen/ridehome ↗

9. 9D-301

   Detail 9 · Hackathon · 2022

   Summary.io

   Jan 2022

   localhost:3000

   Upload a lecture video and get an AI transcript to study from. Built at MacHacks 2.

   A study tool for recorded lectures: upload a video, watch it beside an AssemblyAI speech-to-text transcript, and (the plan) drag snippets onto your slides to export as a PDF. In 36 hours our team of four built upload, playback and transcription.

   Role Team of 4: AssemblyAI integration, repo setup and write-up

   1. 1Wrote the AssemblyAI calls that submit audio for transcription and fetch the transcript.
   2. 2Set up the repo and React app, merged the Express transcription server, and wrote the README and Devpost story.
   3. 3Teammates built the video upload page and upload server (Douglas Chen) and an Express server that polls AssemblyAI for the finished transcript (Aditya Bhadauriya).

   MaterialsReact · AssemblyAI · Node.js · Express

   WithDouglas Chen, Aditya Bhadauriya, Fady Morcos

   Devpost devpost.com/software/summary-io ↗Demo video vimeo.com/669041921 ↗GitHub github.com/lucasichen/summary ↗

10. 10D-301

    Detail 10 · Hackathon · 2022

    Rest Day

    2nd place, “To Work or Not To Workout” sponsor challenge (AI Endurance), DeltaHacks 8

    Jan 2022

    restday.tech

    A workout planner that schedules rest days, not just workouts. Built at DeltaHacks 8.

    A weekly workout planner that deliberately schedules rest days, designed to use Fitbit sleep and activity data to decide when to train and when to recover. Willie Pai and I built it in 36 hours at DeltaHacks 8.

    Role Team of 2: Fitbit API integration, landing page, deploy

    1. 1Wrote the Fitbit Web API client, which pulls 7-day sleep and activity logs and heart-rate data (a standalone Node script, not yet wired into the UI).
    2. 2Built the navigation bar and landing page with styled-components, plus the routes for the other pages.
    3. 3Merged the feature branches, deployed the React app to GitHub Pages, and wrote the README and Devpost story.
    4. 4Willie Pai built the weekly schedule view and the exercise GIFs.

    MaterialsReact · Fitbit Web API · styled-components · Node.js · Figma

    WithWillie Pai

    Case study /projects/restday →Devpost devpost.com/software/rest-day ↗GitHub github.com/lucasichen/restday ↗